The War on Women, Infants and Children

Dear Mr. President,
Sequestration will cut $700 million from the Women, Infants and Children food, nutrition and health care program. That will eliminate about 775,000 low-income women and children from the program who qualify and are at risk. It means that 775,000 women and children will go hungry so the American military juggernaut can buy 5 problem-plagued F-35 jet fighters from Lockheed-Martin, or 7 more of their unwanted and unneeded C-130s. It means less health, less nutrition and less food for hungry women and kids to pay the $1,380,000 annual salary (plus bonus) to Lockheed’s new CEO, Marillyn Hewson. We’ve regressed 1,000 years in law to a state where a president can throw anyone he deems an enemy into prison indefinitely without legal recourse; or have anyone he puts on his Kill List (it’s Kill List Tuesday again) assassinated by Hellfire or Special Forces or CIA assassins. And now we’re regressing 1,000 years and letting people starve to death while the war profiteers like Hewson feast on bloated salaries and fat bonuses. For politicians, the beauty of sequestration is that no one and everyone is to blame, an unintentional benefit that obscures behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing corruption and betrayal. Yesterday was a bad day in Afghanistan: a helicopter down in bad weather killed 5 U.S. soldiers out on a night raid; an insider attack killed 5 U.S. and 2 Afghan soldiers in Wardak Province (today is Karzai’s deadline for Americans to leave the province), U.S. troops shot to death 2 Afghan civilians whose truck got too close to a U.S. convoy (turns out they were mechanics who serviced police vehicles). Your zombie war in Afghanistan grinds on, tens of millions a day wasted, every Hellfire $68,500 that should better people’s lives, not take them. Each bullet, each bomb, each drone strike, each night raid, creates more hatred, makes us less safe, sinks us deeper into the evil of war, into the mentality of violence and murder and the loss of our own humanity. War dehumanizes everyone. Drones—$5 million apiece—dehumanize the enemy but also dehumanize us as a society. They eliminate food programs for women and children, they de-fund education and social programs like Head Start, they make us a more callous, barbaric nation. The war comes home in many ways, none of them good, none of them honorable or noble or heroic or beneficial. All wars ultimately are against the children, against the innocent. All wars are dumb wars, Mr. President, even yours.